Tuesday, September 26, 2017

How fitting that I stared at the screen and surfed YouTube before finally yielding to the writing. Mostly because my eyes have become heavy, and I know if I do not do it now, I won't until tomorrow. (Which puts me a day behind again!)

With every goal we set, we also encounter numerous obstacles along the way. For this challenge, the goal I have been honing in on has been my incomplete comps paper. The list of obstacles which I have allowed to get in the way of completing that paper could go on and on. However, I'll name a few. The largest one (and biggest monster of them all) was depression. At the time I initially wrote the paper I was far from in a healthy frame of mind. The paper itself didn't help. I cover a fairly tough topic, and each stride forward in progress on the paper set me spiraling backward in emotion. Somehow I pushed through for the initial draft, but revisiting that dragon for the revision is daunting.

At the time when it was first finished, I intended to stride right into the revision process while I was in the writing mode. (And prepared for the mental toil.) However, the paper and all of its supporting articles became lost. I won't begin to touch on how angry that made me. I had already lost of all my previous graduate work thanks to someone carelessly spilling a large quantity of tea all over the entire collection of my graduate work up to that point. Much of my work I had kept hard copies of due to the poor luck I'd had with hard drives, but after this event my hard copies were lost leaving me with no options of a paper to revise but this one. The paper complete with my professors notes and supporting documents were eventually discovered, but by the time they were found new life problems were rolling in to dominate my time and energy.

Now, I'm back where I've started. The paper, the novel, the supporting document all of it has faded somewhat from memory. I'm out of practice writing at a graduate level. It seems like an insurmountable mountain. For each of these, I will draw a card to represent the energy that can give me the strength and wisdom to move past these obstacles whether they are real or perceived.

For as much as I complain about how the Shadowscapes is mean to me, I now feel like a whining nag. The energy in the cards moved my heart.

The first obstacle I named was depression, and for the energy to keep me out of that dark place I drew The Lovers. The paper itself touches on power balances in relationships, and I wrote it at a time when I had been horribly broken. Since then, however, I've met someone who reminds me the very truth I unearth in my thesis can be proven by the exception. I feel this card says that I should give myself plenty of self-love as I write. Embrace my lightness and darkness as well as turn to my actual lover when I need him.

The second obstacle was mostly a pessimistic rant of how each time I intend to work on my paper something terrible happens to significantly delay me. I believe The Star is an indication that I should allow myself to be optimistic and put aside the dark thoughts which block me. The Star follows The Tower and promises that the troubled times have passed.

Lastly I felt concern on my ability to write at the level I had at the time of the paper. Writing grows. Writing well doesn't just happen. It doesn't simply jump from the fingers of a great writer. Great writers start above average, but what drives them into the success of exceptional writing is practice. They write every day, and I've taken a tremendously long break. But here's that Ace of Cups, reversed, flowing freely—just as my writing should.

Alright, Shadowscapes, I take back all the mean things I've said previously.